Acquired by Vertex in April 2001 - itself an SBIR involved small firm in its earlier years - Aurora Biosciences Corporation had been for ovr a decade in the business of designing and developing proprietary drug discovery systems, services and technologies to accelerate and enhance the discovery of new medicines. Aurora developed an integrated technology platform comprised of a portfolio of proprietary fluorescent assay technologies and an ultra-high throughput screening ("UHTS") system designed to allow assay miniaturization and to overcome many of the limitations associated with the traditional drug discovery process. From the outset, the Company entered into collaborative agreements with leading Pharma to include BMS and Lilly, licensing to them the Company's fluorescent assay technologies for their internal discovery research, to collaborate on screen development and as initial members of a syndicate to co-develop Aurora's UHTS system. In addition, Aurora entered into agreements to develop screens for or provide screening services to Sequana Therapeutics, Inc.,, Allelix Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. and Roche Bioscience, Alanex Corporation and ArQule, Inc. ("ArQule") providing Aurora with non-exclusive access to certain of their combinatorial chemistry libraries.
